Obsidian Ridge - Jess Lebow [64]
He had not been patient as a younger man. He had, in fact, hated waiting for anything. In truth, he didn't much like it now. But as an immortal, waiting had become a simple fact of life.
He had grown better at it, through practice. He had had a lot of practice waiting, though he wasn't as rash and reactive as he had been long ago. There was a limit to all of his learned patience.
Xeries was approaching that limit now.
"Do you remember our first ride through the countryside here?" he asked, not taking his eyes off of his wine.
"I've… never been here before," replied a weak, shaky woman's voice.
Xeries turned his attention to his left, where his wife, his queen, sat. Their thrones were carved from the same piece of obsidian, chiseled from the same huge piece of stone as the floor itself. They were attached to each other and to the floor. And when Xeries and his queen sat in their thrones, they could feel the vibrations of the entire citadel, amplified above all other places.
"I know you haven't," he said to his wife, his voice echoing as it always did. "I wasn't speaking to you."
"Oh," she said. She wore a long, black veil that covered her face and shoulders. When seated, its hem collected in her lap.
"This was my home, long ago," he said, looking down on the image at his feet. "Well, a piece of it anyway. As a young man."
"Is that why we are here?" she asked. She wheezed a little as she spoke these words.
"In part," he said. "I need something they have. Something to help me."
His wife's voice grew cold. "Something to maintain your immortality, you mean."
Xeries "stood, his knees popping and creaking as he did. He shuffled down from the dais. His body was bent from age, and he sported the wicked marks and deformations of a man who had dabbled with powers well beyond his control.
"Have you not lived a good life?" he asked. "Have you not been given everything your heart desires?"
"You have shown me places and given me baubles," she replied. "But you have taken more than your fair share in return."
"I have loved you more than I have loved any of my other wives. Does that not please you?"
"That is not true." She spoke these words so forcefully that it caused her to cough. She struggled for air with long, gasping breaths. When her lungs were clear, she continued. "What you call love is merely a memory. The memory of your
J first wife. I have been little more than a replacement. And not even that. I have been a means to an end for you."
Xeries picked up a glass bottle and filled his goblet fuller. He had servants who would do this for him, but there was something enjoyable about pouring his own wine-something left over from the days when his first wife was alive.
"Then why did you marry me?" he asked, not looking at her.
"You seduced me with your promises of riches and power."
"Did I not deliver?" "Does it matter?"
Xeries thought for a moment. "No. I suppose it doesn't."
He gazed at the highly polished obsidian floor. He did not think of himself as the bent-over wizard who looked back at him from the reflection. His thin, pale skin, wrinkled and baggy, hung from his narrow frame. His cheeks stuck out at odd angles, and disfigured lumps protruded from his chin, forehead and ears-the leftover remnants of the day things all went wrong.
There were bits and pieces of Xeries in this man. But it was not really him.
The man looking back from the floor was something Xeries had become. Something he had transformed into, not entirely on accident. His mind wandered back to that day, so many hundreds of years ago…
++++?
Xeries could see her face as clear as if she had been with him yesterday. She was so beautiful. Golden brown hair, almost blond but more like the color of spun honey. Intelligent and kind, wise and patient, she was everything he had ever hoped for.
They married young. He, the fourth son in line for the throne of Tethyr. She, the eldest daughter of a rich and powerful baron.